Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
points out the absurdity of your argument if this is the road that you want to go down setting a precedent to have future Congresses ramming legislation through in the manner that Obamacare was achieved, among other things, granting broad power to political appointees to create questionable mandates at will ....
The Times of London 1846
The greatest tyranny has the smallest beginnings. From precedents overlooked, from remonstrances despised, from grievances treated with ridicule, from powerless men oppressed with impunity, and overbearing men tolerated with complaisance, springs the tyrannical usage which generations of wise and good men may hereafter perceive and lament and resist in vain.
At present, common minds no more see a crushing tyranny in a trivial unfairness or a ludicrous indignity, than the eye uninformed by reason can discern the oak in the acorn, or the utter desolation of winter in the first autumnal fall. Hence the necessity of denouncing with unwearied and even troublesome perseverance a single act of oppression. Let it alone, and it stands on record. The country has allowed it, and when it is at last provoked to a late indignation it finds itself gagged with the record of its own ill compliance.
our founding documents
affirm individual rights(which pre-exist government "US Law")
acknowledge state's rights
limit the federal government's ability to infinge on those rights
like I said, not complicated...all of the numbers and talking points and spinning mean nothing...the answer/solution lies herein 
hey Detbuch, did you know I was born in Ann Arbor, we were practically neighbors  |
Hi, almost neighbor. How did the liberal bastions Ann Arbor and Detroit produce such as we? Being in the belly of the beast teaches the causes of it's dyspepsia.
Your 1846 Times of London piece shows the timelessness of human nature. You can find these gems written as far back as the ancient civilizations. We have a fundamental kinship with our ancient predecessors that belies the notion that we are a product of history rather than history being a product of us. The belief that history, governments, and constitutions are living entities that change or become outdated, obsolete, because of historical progress ignores our nature, and sees it also as evolving through historical progress. It is as though the American Revolution and the form of government that was founded was the high point in some historical movement to experiment with some peculiar notion of "individual liberty," and was fine as a point in history when monarchs and tyrants still ruled and when human nature had not historically evolved beyond it's good and bad elements. The Constitution was fine for a time when individuals had to protect themselves against the inclination in their nature to violate other's rights in order to profit. But now, we have been transported by history to a point in time where we can educate the elimination of the bad in our nature. So we no longer need to fear our rulers, for they will, by dint of historical progress, be benevolent, keeping as their trust the improvement of humanity by a more efficient governmental administrative system. So we don't need the cumbersome constitutional system which has lost its meaning in the modern world. That it has been a stealth revolution rather than a bloody one is evidence that history has solved the barbaric practice of men to bring about change only with violence. That, unbeknownst to the citizens, their form of government, one founded on a Constitution which was almost religiously revered, had been through political slight of hand, changed to fit the era in which they live. There is still a pretense of adhering to that document, but the language used has different meaning than the original document. Words like commerce, regulate, general welfare, among the States, and so on, mean something different to today's legislators and judges than what they meant to the framers. So the Constitution has been brought to life, to fit in with the other living abstractions of the modern age, such as government and history. Ideas have been given a living, breathing, quality by the progressive age. And as such, they have a new type of nature--not one that is fundamental and unchanging, but one that constantly evolves. No telling what evolution the living, breathing "history" will go through. No doubt that historical progress will make it an even better, more improved version.